You can find an even earlier examples of bubble cockpits, starting with the P-51 Mustang—also by North American—and the Me-262. Also the MiG-15 also got a bubble cockpit.

North American would have sufficient experience with compressibility issues from P-51s going into a dive.

My list in no particular order.

B-52
F-4 Phantom
Mirage III
MiG-21 family
F-16
UH-1 Huey
Harrier Jet
F-117
Tu-95
Su-27 and family

crobato,
I looked into info on the F414, and according to the GE website, the dimensions are about the same as those of the F404, which means that the 414 would certainly fit into the F-4 airframe. On top of that, if you were to put a pair of F414’s (or even F404’s) into the airframe of the Phantom, you actually save close to 3,000-lbs. of weight. The engines are slightly thinner and a good bit shorter than the J-79-GE-17’s found on the F-4E’s in service today. I’m not sure what you could do with this extra space, but it does leave you to wonder.

What do you think about the potential of an F-4 powered by F414 engines.

Another thought is the even more powerfuel F414 EPE (or whatever they call it) that could potentially produce 26,000 lbs. of thrust per engine, meaning a Phantom with a whopping 52,000 pounds of thrust.

I know none of this will ever happen, but it’s fun to think about.

The standard F414 is already at 22,000lbs, which is 10% more than the 20,000lbs produced by the PW1120, and that’s already more powerful than the J-79s. F414 EPE sounds nicer. F404 is quite a bit lower in thrust, at 17000lbs to 18000lbs, the same as the J79 but at least you save on weight and economy.

F-4 update in mid 70ies with:
– new engines (derived from F100 of F-16)
– new radar (taken from F-15)
– automatic slat/flap
– slightly strengthened structure

Ain’t going to happen on the first, due to insufficient fuselage diameter. The best you can put for turbofans are the old Speys used by the RAF F-4s (all these engines shipped to China now) or the PW 1120 that was originally used in the Lavi.

The F-15 radar is too big. The radar you can fit on the F-4 is either the APG-66/68 or the APG-65/73 from the Hornet. However, this means your possible choices is even better, since it can cover the AESA APG-79 or APG-80.

3 and 4 are already covered by the F-4E.

But in asymmetrical engagements not stick to the rules of exercises, the outcome can be different. We are all aware that the superior numbers and technical quality will overcome such surprises and set-backs and will be win in the end. But modern conflicts are time-limited. If a military success is not achived, even the stronger AF can “loose”, when it comes to politics.

Ah nicely put, Sens.

I don’t really see why bistatic or multistatic would cost so much. You are already putting in a network of monostatic arrays. True, the location of each array in the multistatic network needs to be very precise, but that can be dealt with satellite position. Of course this is far from a mature technology, but it is a very promising one, and we will leave that with the actual researchers. Studies like the one you quoted, may have a political motivation—you certainly don’t want to have the Congress know about the vulnerability of your baby, that won’t make you look good when it comes to lobbying for budgets. Thus I want to leave USAF studies out of it in the meantime, because there is a conflict of interest. China has looked both at metric radars and multistatic ones and fair to say, it has implemented the former, and starting to apply the latter, and for certain, they are giving the latter much serious study and development.

Both fiberoptics or high speed datalinks to link stations should not be a problem, given today’s technology. ECM is always a problem but that’s the same if you have monostatic radars. It’s a constant.

There are other technologies. For example, AESA allows for sharper beam and this can allow for a brute ‘death ray’ solution to a low RCS target. I mean hit it with such focus and intensity that a reflection is inescable. VLO is never perfect, which is why at closer ranges it is detectable. All it does is greatly reduce detection by range, which means there is always some radiation that escaped design intentions and head back to the reciever’s position. But what if we focus the beam so that the radiant energy is equivalent to that of the radar in shorter ranges? Solid state emitters can also scan on a much wider variety of frequencies, and it’s hard to counter for all the frequencies bcause essentially, VLO is trying to optimize against certain wavelengths, and you cannot have a jack of all trades, master of none design against all wavelengths.

There is also large jumps in the way thermal and optical imaging have improved too. Nowadays, thermal CCDs are so good, you can make out photographic images of objects in a cold environment like the dead of winter.

Is that J-10 SMT? LOL.. How come got a hump back?

Kind of like the Block 52+ F-16 two seaters. The second seat displaced avionics which are now relocated to the spine.

Institute 607 is Leihua. 14 is NRIET. 38 is East China Research Institute of Electronic Engineering, or ECRIEE, located in Anhui. ECRIEE is best known for its ground and sea air defense and search radars.